Yamile Saied Méndez thrusts readers into action from the very start of her forthcoming middle grade novel, The Beautiful Game. Valeria “Magic” Salomón – star player of the Overlords – is playing in a State Cup game.
And the 13-year-old is determined to win. So Valeria decides to sidestep a play her coach (and Argentine grandfather) planned and try things her way. “I stomped my foot, pulverizing Coach’s order under the spikes of my pink cleats.”
One of Valeria’s teammates whispers, “You got it, Magic.”
She nods. The same teammate moves out of the way at the last minute for her to take the shot. And Valeria does. GOOOOALLLLL!!!!!!!
“I ran and ran and ran, fighting the impulse to take my jersey off and swing it in the air like the boys did,” she narrates. “The ref would card me if I showed my sports bra, even if it was mainly for decoration right now.”
Valeria is the only girl on her all-boys team, which isn’t really an issue until something happens to her later at the State Cup semifinal. She gets her first period, during that game. The following day, Valeria overhears her grandfather-coach and members of her team discussing moving forward without her. If she stays, the Overlords wouldn’t be able to play in a tournament. Girl players have their own tournament.
The news shakes Valeria to her core, and angers her. She soon finds herself without a team, and at increasing odds with her grandfather. Her home is also struggling with a recent death in the family.
But with the support of her grandmother and best friend, Valeria rises up and decides to try to join a team she’s long ignored: an all-girls team known as The Amazons. Can Valeria find her place on her new team and learn to play like a girl?
For Méndez – author of the Pura Belpré Award-winning Furia – The Beautiful Game is a heartfelt novel that interweaves many themes of family, perseverance, and second chances.
Writers Mentorship Program mentee Amaris Castillo sat down with Méndez, her 2023 middle grade mentor, to discuss The Beautiful Game – out now from Algonquin Young Readers.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Amaris Castillo (AC): Congratulations on The Beautiful Game. I know you’re a lifelong lover of fútbol. What inspired you to write this story?
Yamile Saied Méndez (YSM): It was a very long and winded way to The Beautiful Game. When I was starting to learn how to become a writer, I took an SCBWI intensive with a very famous editor who had edited some of my favorite books. For an in-class assignment I had the image of this girl who was swinging a baseball bat. But she wasn’t a baseball player. I knew that. She was swinging the bat, and she just had this attitude. I remember sharing that piece of writing during that class, and everybody liked it very much. Nothing came of it.
But the following summer, I was already doing my master’s and I was in the first group that went to a residency in Bath, England. It was also a generative workshop, so I had been excited that I didn’t have to plan anything beforehand. But I knew we were going to have to be writing on the spot. And I remembered this girl with a bat.
The teachers were Martine Leavitt and Tim Wynne-Jones, who were incredible and gave us guidelines for something on the spot. And I remembered this character, and I had Valeria swinging the bat at a birthday party, to bust the piñata. Her character was just fully formed. I remember during the week of the workshop, we had to expand that scene. And Martine and Tim were telling us we had to put our character in the worst situation we could imagine. And I knew Valeria was an athlete, and so what is the worst thing that could happen to her? And then one thought went to the other, and I’m like, Oh, if she’s playing in an all-boy team, the worst thing could be for her to get her period in the middle of the game. The story just unfolded from that. The Beautiful Game was my creative thesis for my master’s. So during the semester, I worked under Jane Kurtz, who was my advisor. She was so in love with the character that it made me excited every month to submit more pages to her. And that’s how I wrote the whole first draft that year.
AC: Your main character, Valeria “Magic” Salomón, is the star of the Overlords, the top boys’ team in Utah. There’s a reason she’s called Magic. You begin the book by placing her in a boys’ team, which can bring interesting dynamics. What made you want to do that?
YSM: I’m very involved in children’s sports. All my children have played – boys and girls. Up until the teenage years, it’s not uncommon to see co-ed teams. As children get older, you see fewer and fewer girls. My son is 12 and, in his very last game last year, there was a girl on the rival team. So up until that age, you will still see a girl or two. It never is a problem until the teenage years when, if there is not a girls team available, they have to quit. That’s what happens in a lot of small schools or small towns that don’t have girls sports available. If they’re lucky, they can switch to an all-girl team. But then there are other complications, where some of the other girl teams have been playing together for a few years already, and then the newcomer has to make her place and earn her spot. That’s what happens to Valeria. So my inspiration was real life, and things that I see two or three times a week on the soccer pitch.
AC: Valeria’s abuelo is her coach. He’s raising Magic with his wife – Valeria’s abuela, Lita. Abuelo is super rough around the edges. The relationship between Magic and her grandfather can be difficult at times. What was it like depicting this kind of relationship on the page?
YSM: It was fun [Laughs]. I loved it. They are the same person. They’re both stubborn and opinionated, but they love each other so much. It’s just that they show love in different ways.
The grandpa is an old-style coach. Many readers, or older readers, will recognize this character because that tough love from coaches wasn’t uncommon. Even during the Olympics, there was this huge talk about how the gymnastics program in the U.S. used to be super strict. Yes, they won a lot of medals, but to the detriment of the mental health of the girls. Now that the style of coaching has changed, we still have beautiful results with the cherry on top of having Olympic gold medalists who have good mental health.
I wanted to show how her grandpa was one of the remnants of that old style of coaching, and how other generations would have taken it. But not Valeria, who is Gen Alpha. She’s not going to put up with her grandpa’s behavior, so she’s going to talk back. I saw some criticism about that, and I’m happy that it created some conversation on how young people are not going to put up with the treatment that older generations put up with.
AC: During the State Cup semifinal, Valeria gets her period for the first time. It is a big moment, literally on the field. This is not the first time you’ve written about periods. Can you talk about what it was like to set up this pivotal scene in the book? Because Valeria’s period also sets off a sequence of events.
YSM: There are some clues of what’s going to happen beforehand, and I’m hoping my readers – who will hopefully be a little more savvy – will catch the clues that everybody can get except for Valeria. Because she is in denial that she’s going to get her period. Some people in earlier reviews were like, Oh, it was a little dramatic. How could she not know? But this was very intentional. I wanted to show that Valeria was just not paying attention to her body, not paying attention to the clues. Of course the period caught her by surprise, but because she hadn’t been in touch with herself and aware of what was happening…
I also wanted to put a little bit of emphasis on how the first period experience doesn’t have to be dramatic, or traumatic. The experience is way better when there is information, when children know what a period is all about. Because when we have knowledge, we have the power. Even if we cannot stop it, we can control the situation… I wanted to show how having knowledge is a way for young people to have power over their experience. It doesn’t have to be horrible. It doesn’t have to be super terrible.
AC: In your book there’s also a theme about a kind of estrangement between a daughter and her father. Valeria’s dad is a bit absent from her life. As a reader, it was heartbreaking to read from Valeria’s perspective. What message were you hoping to send by including this in The Beautiful Game?
YSM: I wanted to show how different families can be, because Valeria is being raised by her grandparents. Her biological dad was a teenage dad and he is part of her life, but he’s still learning how to be a dad. But he lives out of state, so it’s complicated. And although Valeria has this very sometimes even toxic relationship with her grandpa, he is the present father in her life.
I wanted to show that families are complicated, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t love. And as long as there’s love and there’s a desire by all parties to form a relationship, that’s a good start. It doesn’t mean that all has to happen at once.
“The experience is way better when there is information, when children know what a period is all about. Because when we have knowledge, we have the power. Even if we cannot stop it, we can control the situation… I wanted to show how having knowledge is a way for young people to have power over their experience.”
AC: I want to talk about Valeria joining a girls’ team. Her love of the game thrusts her into this completely new environment, where she’s one of many girls – and not the only girl. What were you intentional about in piecing together Valeria’s experience on a girls’ team? Were there aspects of being on a girls’ team that you wanted to show?
YSM: I wanted to show that camaraderie and that funniness and all the emotions that exist in a girls team. Boys are emotional. I have seen this in my own kids’ teams. But they hold their emotions together, like their tears. Girls laugh and cry when they miss a goal, and they cry when they score, and they’re happy. It’s so beautiful to see them show the full spectrum of emotions, and I wanted to show that. I wanted to give Valeria the space to be able to show her emotions.
In the boy’s team, she’s the best player. And it’s not because she is the girl, or in detriment of being a girl; she’s just the most talented player in that team. When she goes to the girls team, she sees and admires the other girls who play as well. I wanted her to be a little bit insecure, not because of her gender, again, but because of her skills. I wanted her to learn how to play in a team – not to be the individual star. To learn that soccer is a team sport, after all. And so I wanted to show that sometimes girls are pitted against each other. They compete for everything in the world. I feel like society also pits girls and women against each other, and I wanted my character to learn that she’s stronger not when she’s competing with her peers, but when she is collaborating with them. When she is part of the team. So I hope that shows.
AC: It does. What are you hoping readers take away from The Beautiful Game?
YSM: I hope that they have space to talk about uncomfortable topics, like getting your period, growing up, and the other things that come along with growing up. It’s all (about) the social drama. It’s how we change as human beings.
I hope that, when they close the book, they have the feeling that playing a sport is fun. That’s the main reason human beings play sports: because it’s fun. That’s why I watch them, because I have fun. They give people the opportunity to stretch themselves and achieve things that seem impossible. I think that’s something that we saw at the Olympics, how the world loves to come together to cheer for people who are achieving their dreams.
And I also hope that they are inspired. Again, it sounds like a cliche and maybe a little cheesy, but I hope that when they close the book, they’re inspired to go and fight for their own dreams… At the end of the day, The Beautiful Game is life itself, more than the sport. And I hope that they’re just excited to live their lives.
Yamile Saied Méndez is the author of many books for young readers and adults, including Furia, a Reese’s YA Book Club selection and the 2021 Inaugural Pura Belpré Young Adult Gold Medalist, Where Are You From?, Shaking Up the House, and the Horse Country series, among others. She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina, but has lived most of her life in a lovely valley surrounded by mountains in Utah. She’s a graduate of Voices of Our Nations (VONA) and the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing for Children and Young Adults program, and a founding member of Las Musas, a marketing collective of Latine writers. Connect with her at yamilesmendez.com or on Instagram @yamilesmendez.
Amaris Castillo is an award-winning journalist, writer, and the creator of Bodega Stories, a series featuring real stories from the corner store. Her writing has appeared in La Galería Magazine, Aster(ix) Journal, Spanglish Voces, PALABRITAS, Dominican Moms Be Like… (part of the Dominican Writers Association’s #DWACuenticos chapbook series), and most recently Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology and Sana, Sana: Latinx Pain and Radical Visions for Healing and Justice. Her short story, “El Don,” was a prize finalist for the 2022 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writers’ Prize by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. She is a proud member of Latinx in Publishing’s Writers Mentorship Class of 2023 and lives in Florida with her family.
